Kathmandu, June 28: State Minister for Labour and Transport Management Surendra Hamal today said that the rights and responsibilities of the contract labourers should be defined and protected by law and country’s labour administration should shoulder the full responsibility of curbing exploitation against contract labourers.
Labour experts believe that the phenomenon of employing workers on job contract or wage contract began in Nepal with the inception of planned development back in 1950. The early five-year plans that focused mainly on infrastructure development encouraged the trend of hiring foreign technicians and Nepalese workers through contractors. With initiation of industrialisation process in 1960s, through set up of state-owned enterprises that hired workers mainly on pay roll, the trend of hiring workers on contract was slowed down.
However, the emergence of private sector export oriented enterprises in 1980s facilitated involvement of thousands of workers in wage earning activities.
In the recent decade a drastic change in employment patterns is noticed all over the world. Experts and trade unionists caution against growing trend towards substitution of regular employment by contract employment. They are concerned that this trend present very little scope of unionising workers to protect them against exploitation and violation of rights.
The three-day Workers’ Education Seminar on Contract Labour that kicked off today is being organised in ILO-Kathmandu (International Labour Organisation), in collaboration with Bureau of Workers’ Activities at ILO headquarters and ILO South Asia Multidisciplinary Advisory Team (SAAT).
“In many places, the working conditions of contract labourers are worse than those under regular employment and the workers face more precarious working lives. The organisation of contract labourers poses more problems than for those where direct employer-employee relationship exist,” said Senior ILO Advisor Leyla Tegmo-Reddy.
She also noted that intensified international economic competition has brought about an increasing recourse to flexible employment arrangement that are “less secure and provide fewer social benefits” and vast income inequality that is contributed by weakening of the bargaining strength of labour.
In the face of these formidable social and labour problems, Tegmo-Reddy said, the ILO focuses to promote opportunities for decent work for all that is “carried out in condition of freedom, equity, security and human dignity”.
Deputy Director of Bureau of Workers Activities at ILO headquarter Michael Sebastian said that though globalisation of economy and liberalisation of trade has brought about plentiful of economic advantages, it has imposed challenges to the effectiveness of protective legislation and unconstraint dialogue between employee-employer to facilitate decent work.
Trade unionists Rajendra Bahadur Raut, Bishnu Rimal and Laxman Basnet said that the increasing trend of hiring workers on contract is threatening the unionising capability of workers making even the formal sector workers vulnerable to exploitation. They cautioned against emergence of bogus contract system being practised in some of developed countries and violation of basic rights of workers.
“Hiring workers on contract is a compulsion and necessity for survival of industries,” said Rajendra Khetan of Employer Council of Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FNCCI). He added that majority of the industries in Nepal is facing a slack, thus, demanding much from them is not always justifiable. But, he assured that the FNCCI is always ready to sit and talk for uplift of workers.